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The relationship between Israel and America could easily be described as myopic, but if Americans only knew what was being done in their name - the bottomless pit of money, all the history and all the facts - perhaps things would be different, perhaps peace might finally come. For in what appears to be blind submission, The U.S. Government finds itself unilaterally supporting the actions of the Israeli Government - oblivious to the facts surrounding the unfolding events - the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza - in what is now being dubbed in the blogsphere as "The Chanukah Massacre". And while 5 or 6 Israeli citizens are reported dead, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed. with weaponry funded almost entirely by the United States - more than $6B annually.

After having her humanitarian aide boat, The Dignity, rammed by a small fleet of covert Israeli naval patrols, Cynthia McKinney - former U.S. Congressperson - had this to say when interviewed on CNN:

A US-International relief aid boat called "The Dignity" was just recently rammed - in an attempt to sink it - by a government sanctioned Israeli vessel, which was part of a covert aquatic brigade of Israeli patrol boats. This dramatic incident, part of the overall, deadly, military assault by the Israeli government against the Palestinians of Gaza - death toll in excess of 400 - does not come as a complete surprise, as Israel has been shown to be increasingly aggressive toward foreign journalist, doctors, political observers and humanitarians who hold a a view that shines a less than favorable light on it's government. But with an American on board - Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congressperson - one has to wonder if any other nation, especially an Arab nation, would be allowed to get away with such a wanton act of violence, sans provocation. As well, for someone like incoming U.S. President Barak Obama, who appears to have an opinion about…

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, devotes a full hour to the life and legacies of Odetta and Harold Pinter. Many consider Odetta to be the voice of the civil rights movement, as she is attributed with inspiring an entire generation to rise up in song, with a voice of protest and liberation. And as for Harold Pinter, he was - 2005 Nobel Prize Winner - the literary conscience of England.

No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’ By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL The New York TimesPublished: December 26, 2008

DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace. Read More Here

Getting Past the 'Protein Myth' That Keeps People from Quitting Meat and DairyBy Kathy Freston, Huffington Post. Posted June 3, 2008. The way Americans obsess about protein, you'd think protein deficiency was the number one health problem in America. Of course it's not. When I tell people that I'm a vegan, the most popular question, by far, inevitably follows: "But, how do you get enough protein?"

There it is again, I think, the meat industry's most potent weapon against vegetarianism -- the protein myth. And it is just that -- a myth.

Dr. Dean Ornish writes of his Eat More, Weigh Less vegetarian diet -- the one diet that has passed peer-review for taking weight off and keeping it off for more than 5 years -- that in addition to being the one scientifically proven weight loss plan that works long-term, it "may help to prevent a wide variety of other illnesses including breast cancer in women, prostate cancer in men, colon cancer, lung cancer, …

Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by CommonDreams.orgby Richard Falk The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of warEven the most naive American voter cannot be expected to see the morally, legally and politically questionable death sentence given to Saddam Hussein a milestone in the Bush Administration's illegal war in Iraq. As the milestones pile up, so do the bodies.Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical wo…

The Grinning Skull: The Homicides You Didn't Hear About in Hurricane KatrinaSunday 21 December 2008by: Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch.com What do you do when you notice that there seems to have been a killing spree? While the national and international media were working themselves and much of the public into a frenzy about imaginary hordes of murderers, rapists, snipers, marauders, and general rampagers among the stranded crowds of mostly poor, mostly black people in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a group of white men went on a shooting spree across the river.

In an era when manufactured "celebrities" are as common as drab backyard sparrows, Eartha Kitt, who died on Christmas day of colon cancer at age 81, was the kind of strange, wondrous, exotic bird you lay eyes on once and never forget. I first discovered Kitt when I was a young boy watching after-school reruns of Batman; she was touted in the credits as an "Extra Special Guest Villainess" for her role as "The Catwoman," and while everything about the show was pure ridiculousness -- nothing more so than the way Kitt gleefully rolled her r's on words like "prrrrrrrhaps" and "terrrrrrrrific" -- it was an exercise in futility to try to take my eyes off the giddy woman in the black bodysuit who seemed to turn her every scene into a wild one-woman show.

Eartha Kitt: An Anti-War PatriotNation Magazine: by John Nichols on 12/26/2008 @ 10:42am Eartha Kitt, the sultry singer of hits such as "Santa Baby" who died at age 81 on Christmas Day, was in 1968 an internationally-acclaimed music star who had begun making major stage and screen appearances. So it came as no great surprise when she was invited to a White House luncheon hosted by Lady Bird Johnson. But the First Lady was surprised when she asked Kitt about the Vietnam War. "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," the singer told the First Lady and the 50 other women at the luncheon. "They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam." The First Lady reportedly burst into tears.Read More Here

Some 300 workers lost their jobs when the Archway cookie factory in Ashland, Ohio, was suddenly closed by the private equity firm that owned it. The workers also were left without benefits like health insurance. But then Lance Inc., a Charlotte, North Carolina-based snack food company, purchased Archway at a bankruptcy auction. And last week 60 workers were asked to return immediately, with perhaps more coming back in the months ahead.When it promised to reopen the bakery, Lance gave all 300 former Archway workers a $1,500 prepaid debit card. "I was crying," Devan says of the gift. "I am like, 'What are these people doing? They don't know me. They don't know us. They don't know any of the Archway people. And they are giving each and every one of us $1,500.' " Sexton -- the woman who'd been preparing her kids for a meager holiday -- says of the $1,500 gift: "It was awesome. My first thought was, 'I can give my kids a Christmas.'…

Cellphones and tobacco, two things in this world I refuse to buy and very rarely -if ever - use. They are both socially acceptable and easily accessible. And both are rather deadly. Scientifically speaking, we already know this to be true about tobacco. And though, for years I've suspected it to be true for cellphones, the data is finally streaming in - by way of the international, scientific community. However, because of massive corporate profits, vital information is still being suppressed and misrepresented. Isn't this a replay from big tobacco companies in the 1980's & '90's?

Comfort and convenience or fatal, brain cancer - that seems to be the choice.

All Consuming PatriotismBy Ian Frazier March/April 2002 Issue...As I'm pushing my overfull shopping cart down the aisle, sobbing quietly, moving a bit more slowly because of the extra weight I've lately put on, a couple of troubling questions cross my mind. First, I start to worry about the real depth of my shopping capabilities. So far I have more or less been able to keep up with what the government expects of me. I'm at a level of shopping that I can stand. But what if, God forbid, events take a bad turn and the national crisis worsens, and more shopping is required? Can I shop with greater intensity than I am shopping now? I suppose I could eat even more than I've been eating, and order additional products in the mail, and go on costlier trips, and so on. But I'm not eager, frankly, to enter that "code red" shopping mode. I try to tell myself that I'd be equal to it, that in a real crisis I might be surprised by how much I…

On the night of Saturday, December 6th, two Special Guards of the Greek police clashed with a small group of young men. The exact details of what took place are still unclear, but it is known that one of the Guards fired three shots, and one of those bullets caused the death of 15-year-old Alexander Grigoropoulos

“For the amount of money and number of accounts, it’s practically impossible that he was doing this alone,” said Busson, whose $11.5 billion fund of hedge funds had about $230 million invested with Madoff. “What’s mind-boggling is the amount of assets and the amount of time he was doing it.”

EIM, which manages accounts for mostly institutional clients, invested with funds that had managed accounts overseen by Madoff. EIM will likely write down its stake to zero, Busson said. Madoff was arrested Dec. 11 after he told his sons that Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was a fraud, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In September 2008, I completed the lengthy process of writing a white paper, entitled "Collecting Digital Prints" a guide to digital print provenance. Recently, it has just been peer reviewed by David Rudd Cycleback. Mr. Cycleback, the author of five books, is a noted art historian specializing in fine art (print) authentication and cognition. With one of his best known books is entitled "Judging the Authenticity of Prints by the Masters". In response to reading "Collecting Digital Prints" this is what he had to say:"I read your paper and it seems like a logical and reasonable way to catalog digital art [prints] andphotographs. You communicated the ideas well. Thanks, David"Click here to visit the Collecting Digital Prints webpage to learn more about this document.

Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.

Goodbye to evilFor it has served it's purposeIn this power playLessons have been learnedMerit has been earned

And sunshine fills my heart divine

Goodbye to hunger, poverty and painAs I no longer need these thingsAS fester and plague drop downLike dead scales from snakes' skinLife and death are now one

And sunshine fills my heart divine

Goodbye to ignorance, fear and greedFor these things I no longer needAnd decay now gives wayTo bliss and beauty so sublimeAs all is being transformed anew

And sunshine fills my heart divine

So open your eyes and seeThings you've never seen beforeSpread your wings and flyTo heights you've never knownAnd be all that you've ever dreamedFor a new world is now born_______________________________________A New World Is Now BornA Poetic Declaration by Max Eternity4 July 2006All Rights Reserved

About Me

Max Eternity is a visionary polymath, whose expertise includes art, design, writing, history, dance, food, music and social criticism. He is a contributing author to a college textbook, entitled At Issue: Poverty in America, published by Gale/Cengage (2015) and since 2010, Eternity has been a featured writer at Truthout.org, also being one of the first arts writers at The Huffington Post. Eternity is currently writing three new books whose working titles are From Bauhaus | To Black Mountain, The Agency of Art: War Pedagogy and Social Change in the Western World – 1915 to 1965, and Beyond Oppression: Colonization and the Language of Heroes.